Reynard North (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shardofwinter) wrote2020-03-09 10:43 pm
shardofwinter) wrote2020-03-09 10:43 pm
Gathering the shards
There’s a storm on the horizon. One that twists and rumbles in discomfort at the changing pressure and tumultuous temperature. From a distant peak Reynard watches the grey clouds cloak the valley below, and feels the downpour as if his skin is the drowning mixture of grass and rock. Yet if he turns away, he can see the hills opposite where rays of sunshine dance upon the landscape, and feel them warm his cheeks like a familiar caress. Serene beauty pitted against grim relentlessness.
How inviting is the warmth and the pretty patterns playing out over the rolling countryside, how tempting to go there and never wander. But he should know, better than anyone, that you can’t have the good without the bad. Eventually he has to go into the valley, to be weighed down by the deluge, unable to see past the darkness or the heavy rain battering his eyes.
It’s time to embrace the storm. To enter it and walk out the other side while he can. While he can force himself to do what every inch of him is screaming to avoid.
This isn’t the first time he’s tried, but there are more odds in his favour this time. He’s less flesh and more spirit, and has been for longer. Cutting ties may have been for no better reason than to release himself from a wild, dangerous animal, but it also cut off dead weight. It severed connections to the mortal world. No one stopped him. No one reached out for him. The people who mattered followed him. His life was made all the easier for it, and he's left certain that he’s ready.
Last time he only touched the storm, this time he steps into it.
We've heard of you because every one of us is only here because of you… You were the first, and the rest of us followed... You're the first to become human.
Hazel's words have tormented him long enough. The questions have plagued him ceaselessly and he would rather endure the answers than the cruel wonderings of his imagination.
Tell me.
Show me.
At first the world continues on as if it hasn’t heard him, as if he hasn’t reached for answers. Again he insists, firmer this time.
It’s time for me to know.
It’s time for me to remember what I’ve forgotten.
The rain continues hard and fast, but in a lazy stirring something slackens and Reynard falls to his knees before he knows why, a hand slamming into the mud to catch himself. There has always been a slowness in between the human and the spirit with him. With his mortal side so far away now it’s no wonder it takes him a moment to understand what has happened beyond a sensation of a tendon snapping into its rightful place. It doesn’t take him too long, however. Just long enough for him to hesitate. For him to think for the thousandth time that perhaps he had forgotten for a reason.
But you remember now, don’t you?
You remember as if the ice still masks your face, back when it burned. You remember how hard it was to run when each gasping breath poured blood into your lungs courtesy of the arrow in your back. It didn’t matter who you were abandoning. Cowardice didn’t cross your mind back then. Survival did. All you knew was that if you stopped you would die. How little you knew then. You stopped and you were born.
You remember the panic before being cut down by a foreign man. You remember the flash of his weapon in the light, and your heart twisting in awe and terror.
You remember being caught in a robbery… more than once. It took you long enough to be able to fight, and longer still to survive. After a while you were more often killed for what you had done than what you owned. You thought you survived until your Season after they plucked out your eyes. You thought they feared you because you could see their terror when you returned, not because you walked through the door. Will you be as naive now as you were only moments ago?
Even when you didn’t remember why you always knew that some Winters were worse than others, and that it wasn’t always because your Season bade you to. No, you often carried out your revenge and rarely questioned why you had such a hunger for it. Now you know it was because they placed you on a pyre and demanded you confess while you demanded they beg your forgiveness. Before your screams and the roaring flames deafened the square, you told them their god's divine Nature would avenge you, but it was your will that directed their demise. You kept your own promise.
For all your revenge there was no one to blame but yourself when you paid the barman’s bills and took a shortcut past the quay. Nor could you avenge yourself when you rested briefly on an old wall that crumbled beneath your hand and sent you tumbling down the cliff side. The architect was long dead and it was your own weight that carried you down.
Which illness will you remember most vividly once your mortality has returned? One that ate your flesh, or one that added to it? Perhaps you won’t remember how it felt beyond the weakness and pain and maddening unbearableness of it all. The faces of those you sought help from, however, you’ll remember those clearly. There was a thought that tormented you as church bells rang in the distance: That this was your penance. That it was your punishment to see people run from you like a monster the one time you weren’t. The one time you were reaching out for their help.
How many times did your neck snap with the help of the hangman’s noose? You can count now, and feel the rope around your throat and the panic flooding through your veins. The last words read to you spoke of some crimes that were yours, and some that weren't. There are better things to be recalled in what you thought of last. If you choose the right memories you could even hold them close as proof you’re a good man at heart.
Will you visit the graves of the men who were buried with you now that you remember their names? They were with you, carving away at the soil, preparing the charges, when the walls came in. Even with what you can recall it’s impossible to tell whether it was the other soldiers who finished you, or the earth.
Do you remember the gunshot that caught you across a battlefield? Or losing your strength in the gaol? Do you remember your head rolling away from your body, and the minute you spent free of your shoulders? You remember the pleas of others, but do you remember how often you screamed and begged? Do you remember the walls closing in on you as you dug deep underground? Was the explosion worse, or the shuddering collapse? Do you remember waking up in a burning inn? Or hitting the pavement in a street fight? Was the weight of the boulder worth the life saved as you pushed him aside? Was the night's joy worth the furious husband's wrath?
Do you remember being thrown overboard in a storm? Do you remember having more bone than flesh? Or when your skin took on the blue-grey of your Season? Do you remember sweating during the night until there was nothing left of you? Do you remember drinking and never waking up? Do you remember how many times you were dragged into another man’s fight? Or how many fights you started?
Do you remember why you forgot?
Of course you do.
You remember everything now. Every. Agonising. Detail.
The real question is; Wouldn't you like to forget again?
How inviting is the warmth and the pretty patterns playing out over the rolling countryside, how tempting to go there and never wander. But he should know, better than anyone, that you can’t have the good without the bad. Eventually he has to go into the valley, to be weighed down by the deluge, unable to see past the darkness or the heavy rain battering his eyes.
It’s time to embrace the storm. To enter it and walk out the other side while he can. While he can force himself to do what every inch of him is screaming to avoid.
This isn’t the first time he’s tried, but there are more odds in his favour this time. He’s less flesh and more spirit, and has been for longer. Cutting ties may have been for no better reason than to release himself from a wild, dangerous animal, but it also cut off dead weight. It severed connections to the mortal world. No one stopped him. No one reached out for him. The people who mattered followed him. His life was made all the easier for it, and he's left certain that he’s ready.
Last time he only touched the storm, this time he steps into it.
We've heard of you because every one of us is only here because of you… You were the first, and the rest of us followed... You're the first to become human.
Hazel's words have tormented him long enough. The questions have plagued him ceaselessly and he would rather endure the answers than the cruel wonderings of his imagination.
Tell me.
Show me.
At first the world continues on as if it hasn’t heard him, as if he hasn’t reached for answers. Again he insists, firmer this time.
It’s time for me to know.
It’s time for me to remember what I’ve forgotten.
The rain continues hard and fast, but in a lazy stirring something slackens and Reynard falls to his knees before he knows why, a hand slamming into the mud to catch himself. There has always been a slowness in between the human and the spirit with him. With his mortal side so far away now it’s no wonder it takes him a moment to understand what has happened beyond a sensation of a tendon snapping into its rightful place. It doesn’t take him too long, however. Just long enough for him to hesitate. For him to think for the thousandth time that perhaps he had forgotten for a reason.
But you remember now, don’t you?
You remember as if the ice still masks your face, back when it burned. You remember how hard it was to run when each gasping breath poured blood into your lungs courtesy of the arrow in your back. It didn’t matter who you were abandoning. Cowardice didn’t cross your mind back then. Survival did. All you knew was that if you stopped you would die. How little you knew then. You stopped and you were born.
You remember the panic before being cut down by a foreign man. You remember the flash of his weapon in the light, and your heart twisting in awe and terror.
You remember being caught in a robbery… more than once. It took you long enough to be able to fight, and longer still to survive. After a while you were more often killed for what you had done than what you owned. You thought you survived until your Season after they plucked out your eyes. You thought they feared you because you could see their terror when you returned, not because you walked through the door. Will you be as naive now as you were only moments ago?
Even when you didn’t remember why you always knew that some Winters were worse than others, and that it wasn’t always because your Season bade you to. No, you often carried out your revenge and rarely questioned why you had such a hunger for it. Now you know it was because they placed you on a pyre and demanded you confess while you demanded they beg your forgiveness. Before your screams and the roaring flames deafened the square, you told them their god's divine Nature would avenge you, but it was your will that directed their demise. You kept your own promise.
For all your revenge there was no one to blame but yourself when you paid the barman’s bills and took a shortcut past the quay. Nor could you avenge yourself when you rested briefly on an old wall that crumbled beneath your hand and sent you tumbling down the cliff side. The architect was long dead and it was your own weight that carried you down.
Which illness will you remember most vividly once your mortality has returned? One that ate your flesh, or one that added to it? Perhaps you won’t remember how it felt beyond the weakness and pain and maddening unbearableness of it all. The faces of those you sought help from, however, you’ll remember those clearly. There was a thought that tormented you as church bells rang in the distance: That this was your penance. That it was your punishment to see people run from you like a monster the one time you weren’t. The one time you were reaching out for their help.
How many times did your neck snap with the help of the hangman’s noose? You can count now, and feel the rope around your throat and the panic flooding through your veins. The last words read to you spoke of some crimes that were yours, and some that weren't. There are better things to be recalled in what you thought of last. If you choose the right memories you could even hold them close as proof you’re a good man at heart.
Will you visit the graves of the men who were buried with you now that you remember their names? They were with you, carving away at the soil, preparing the charges, when the walls came in. Even with what you can recall it’s impossible to tell whether it was the other soldiers who finished you, or the earth.
Do you remember the gunshot that caught you across a battlefield? Or losing your strength in the gaol? Do you remember your head rolling away from your body, and the minute you spent free of your shoulders? You remember the pleas of others, but do you remember how often you screamed and begged? Do you remember the walls closing in on you as you dug deep underground? Was the explosion worse, or the shuddering collapse? Do you remember waking up in a burning inn? Or hitting the pavement in a street fight? Was the weight of the boulder worth the life saved as you pushed him aside? Was the night's joy worth the furious husband's wrath?
Do you remember being thrown overboard in a storm? Do you remember having more bone than flesh? Or when your skin took on the blue-grey of your Season? Do you remember sweating during the night until there was nothing left of you? Do you remember drinking and never waking up? Do you remember how many times you were dragged into another man’s fight? Or how many fights you started?
Do you remember why you forgot?
Of course you do.
You remember everything now. Every. Agonising. Detail.
The real question is; Wouldn't you like to forget again?